The primary goal of this site is to provide mature, meaningful discussion about the Vancouver Canucks. However, we all need a break some time so this forum is basically for anything off-topic, off the wall, or to just get something off your chest! This forum is named after poster Creeper, who passed away in July of 2011 and was a long time member of the Canucks message board community.

BCExpat wrote:I think it's a Trane AC unit. I am happy with it's performance, although it is a bit loud. It's located away from the bed rooms, so it really doesn't disturb us, but when I get a new one, I want to make sure it isn't as loud as this one is. Thanks for advice - I'll just replace it with another AC unit. Do you pay much of a premium for and American Standard AC unit over a Trane or Lennox unit? I though Trane and Lennox were good brands (what do I know - I'm not a HVAC guy )

Actually Trane and American Standard are made in the same plant factory. Sorta like Ford and Mazda?

One of the first questions I asked my boss is "Why not Trane?" and in his years of service work or warranty work American Standard was one he saw the least. In my years, I'd agree but I'm sure you could get 10 guys from the same trade and we'd all have our favorite units. I do know on the Island Lennox is a bitch to get warranty work done on, and we rarely rec'v call back work on American Standard units. (bad business model to follow! lol)

Back to your PHO place. So you have a HP outside and an air handler inside I'd imagine? Tell me more about the system. Noise really shouldn't be an issue from either. Your ductwork shouldn't be noisy if it is accoustically insulated, some opt out when installing this bcs it is more coin per foot.

With the set up in my house (split level, beds up living space down) I have decided to go with a similar system I installed in my rents house a few months back. They are usually referred to as "ductless splits" but I'm sure everyone has seen them at their local office or small commericial building. With grants and my juicy discount I'm going to MAKE money! Ha!

It is an air handling unit outside - not sure what is inside, as it is within the ceiling space (along with the furnace). Anyway, it is the exterior air handling unit that is noisy. Having said that, I notice that a few of my neighbours also have noisy exterior air handling units. It's not really that bad, but it's noisier than I thought it should be. Could it just be the age of the units? Anyway, it isn't the duct work that is noisy. Also, the unit works well - they house is always nice and cool when we are down there. I'll have to take a closer look at it when I go down there next time (in September).

Oh - one other thing - the exterior air handling unit sits on a concrete pad. The concrete pad is not exactly level (it's very close to level, but it does tilt a bit to one side). This might also have something to do with it.

So back on May 23rd we had a pipe break. Fixed it. On the 25th it broke further back.

Fuck.

Insurance sends a company over. Walls are wet. Carpet is toast. Mold behind another wall. Other little issues. Plumber shows up to patch pipe so we have water in the house for the interim. While he is there another pipe joint goes in the basement ceiling. No I'm not joking, the plumber found it when he went to turn the water back off after finding the original leak. So he fixes that and the other one. This is the 6th pipe break/leak since December 2009 and the second time insurance has dealt with it. Everyone has been wondering why. First we thought pressure because there was no reducer on the house (go figure). That wasn't it because we put one on and still had problems.

After pulling back the drywall and seeing all the pipes we have our answer! The morons who plumbed the house used a smattering of different ages of pipe and used 3/8" instead of 1/2". There is corroded spots everywhere. Instead of one water line through the house branching out into the places needed there are 3 separate runs that parrallel one another all over the place. We found a hot water line capped off in the middle of our bedroom ceiling.....there's nothing above there, the bathroom is 15 feet away in the corner! A cold water pipe into that upstairs bathroom goes 4 feet out into the ceiling and then curves back and goes 6 feet back and the up to the bathroom. The pipes int he basement are showing multiple signs of being ready to break in places. There were junction boxes and pot light casings shoved up under the basement ceiling with live lines running into them. When we peeled back some of the ceiling to check for that leak the plumber found a piece of baseboard trim fell out of the ceiling. WTF!?! Insulation haphazardly shoved in the ceiling where there was no need for it. Just brutal. SELL! SELL! SELL! Right? Wrong.

My wife bought the house a year before I met her, she's locked into the mortgage until 2014. If we do nothing to the house we have to declare all these problems when we do sell because we are aware of them. That of course says nothing about the money we'll spend just fixing damaged shit over the course of that time. So our only option? Yeah, you guessed it, we are replacing all the plumbing in our house with the exception of the main bathroom. We also have some serious electrical work to do in the basement.

Now for the best part. The restoration company that was sent by insurance has taken 9 weeks to do a 10 day job. First it was waiting for full approval from Wawanessa. But we've been told they don't ask for a second quote unless a job is more than $10K. This was quoted at just over $7K. Just massive delays. Finally I take Rats advice (thanks Ratman) and become the squeaky wheel. Done and done. They come and do the job.....NOT! They show up to do the floor, and then leave after 3 hours without a word. Floor unfinished. Comes back and leave again 2 days later. Floor? Almost done. Forgot about the closet. The shoddiest work ever on the stairs. I raise Cain.

Guys come and do baseboards, I'm assured the stairs will be fixed. They finish painting. All but the baseboard by the stairs is on. I go check it out later taht day. Baseboards are smeared by the colour from the wall, and not just in one or two little places.....EVERYWHERE! The tape is peeling below where they cut for an electrical outlet. The paint is peeling back next to the other one and the drywall is damaged enough that it wouldn't be hidden by the outlet cover. On a bulkhead above the window there are places where the drywall hasn't been properly secured and the edge of the drywall is pushing a definitive line through the paint. We were able to move our bed back into our room today though, so at least we aren't sleeping in the TV room in the basement. Good thing too, because after we moved the bed, there was mold growing through the carpet where the bed has sat for 9 weeks while we waited for these morons to finish a 10 day job. I wonder what assurances I'll get tomorrow.....

We have, however decided to push through this and forge ahead with a few other fixes since things are so dusty and dirty already anyhow. Our entryway is losing a closet, hardwood is becoming a tile of some sort, the basement is losing a pair of small rooms, getting new floor, new plumbing, some wiring, and new look. Our backdoor is changing from sliding to double garden (this means the deck disappears next year and becomes a patio), and a new front door will be going on. Nothing set entirely in stone yet, but now that we know that the walls we want to remove and modify are most likely not load-bearing, well we hope to begin in two weeks and have the main floor stuff finished by mid September and the basement gutted shortly thereafter, if not before.

BCExpat wrote:Wow Meds, it sounds like you have a real mess on your hands. Make sure you get all of the mould out - that is probably the most important thing you can do.

As far as we can tell the walls hiding mould have all been found. The last vestiges of it appear to be in the basement carpet. The basement is pretty much getting gutted anyways at this point, so I'm optimistically confident that the mould will be expunged.

And yes it is a mess. We had some of the contractors telling us to go back after real-estate, the previous owners, checking with public works at the city to find out who pulled what permits and did what work..... All dead ends. The people who did the shittiest of the work and who are responsible for the worst of the headaches are dead already.

I actually found out today that one of my co-worker's parents lived in the house when he was 10 and it was his parents who lifted the house and did the shitty plumbing and basement work. Who knew. FFS. He was just 10 though and couldn't give me much in the way of answers. Just poor decisions all around by people who wanted to cut corners and save a few cents. My wife and I have both flat out refused to follow suit. It's hurt a bit in the bank account, but we are making sure everything we fix is done properly, and any changes we make aren't going to inconvenience someone else by virtue of being done poorly.

I would like to start the thread with this, "how the fuck do we go about fixing that shit hole recreation property, that Blob Mackenzie bought in the sticks, on a shoe string budget." This is dire.

I've got a contractor fixing all of the structural problems as we speak. He'll have me to lock up by Labour Day. I will go up and do the drywalling, flooring painting etc next spring. The rot, the demo of the front of the cabin and the collapsed floor is too much for a hack like me.

I would like to start the thread with this, "how the fuck do we go about fixing that shit hole recreation property, that Blob Mackenzie bought in the sticks, on a shoe string budget." This is dire.

I've got a contractor fixing all of the structural problems as we speak. He'll have me to lock up by Labour Day. I will go up and do the drywalling, flooring painting etc next spring. The rot, the demo of the front of the cabin and the collapsed floor is too much for a hack like me.

Sound's like the place is bulldozer bait

Anyway, I've had a few renovations like that - it seems like every time you remove a wall, you find something within the wall that needs to be moved. Anyway, it'll be worth it when you're finished.

I would like to start the thread with this, "how the fuck do we go about fixing that shit hole recreation property, that Blob Mackenzie bought in the sticks, on a shoe string budget." This is dire.

I've got a contractor fixing all of the structural problems as we speak. He'll have me to lock up by Labour Day. I will go up and do the drywalling, flooring painting etc next spring. The rot, the demo of the front of the cabin and the collapsed floor is too much for a hack like me.

Sound's like the place is bulldozer bait

It's going hit us about 20 K when all is said and done. Another 5 K for electircal upgrades and moving the power pole etc. At the end of the day we paid 83. If we add 30 to that (thanks to the fucking blue hairs phoning the bylaw office we now need a surveyor out and another permit) we are at 113,000. Market value for a cleared property like that around 1000 square feet across from the lake with all the services is about 250,000. While it has been a pain in the ass and more work than we thought it will still be a very sound investment.

Ah yes, finally running my my wires across my attic(s) tomorrow from my panel for MY own goddamn Heat pump and ductless splits. No more chopping wood, no more super hot living room from the fireplace, no more cold areas, no more baseboard....the last part is great due to efficiency sakes.

Great thing is I got two 12,000BTU units and a three head heat pump for $2250 CAN plus tax. With dem rebates in good old Victoria I might even make money getting this bitch in m'house!

^^^ Baseboards heaters are 100% efficient. They just cost a shit-load to run if your house isn't well insulated.

Heat pumps are the cats ass though...I'm envious Cookie.

I've been slowly renoing our ensuite. I moved the heat vent down the joist bay 14' into our bedroom, where we now have two heat vents and much better circulation (what a difference that made). Now I'll be running a Nuheat mat instead. This weekend I'm putting down the Schluter mat on the floor in prep for the tiles. Curb-less shower baby!!!

BladesofSteel wrote:^^^ Baseboards heaters are 100% efficient. They just cost a shit-load to run if your house isn't well insulated.

Heat pumps are the cats ass though...I'm envious Cookie.

I've been slowly renoing our ensuite. I moved the heat vent down the joist bay 14' into our bedroom, where we now have two heat vents and much better circulation (what a difference that made). Now I'll be running a Nuheat mat instead. This weekend I'm putting down the Schluter mat on the floor in prep for the tiles. Curb-less shower baby!!!

Curb-less showers are the way to go now. We do them all the time now. When we frame up our floors we step down our joisting in the shower area, so we can accommodate a 6-8 inch wide trough wall to wall at foot of wall where shower drain will be. You don't have to slope shower base excessively (tiler will grade it gradually to trough), making for cleaner tiling lines and easier to prep for waterproofing.

"I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? - Plastics." - The Graduate

BladesofSteel wrote:^^^ Baseboards heaters are 100% efficient. They just cost a shit-load to run if your house isn't well insulated.

Heat pumps are the cats ass though...I'm envious Cookie.

I've been slowly renoing our ensuite. I moved the heat vent down the joist bay 14' into our bedroom, where we now have two heat vents and much better circulation (what a difference that made). Now I'll be running a Nuheat mat instead. This weekend I'm putting down the Schluter mat on the floor in prep for the tiles. Curb-less shower baby!!!

Curb-less showers are the way to go now. We do them all the time now. When we frame up our floors we step down our joisting in the shower area, so we can accommodate a 6-8 inch wide trough wall to wall at foot of wall where shower drain will be. You don't have to slope shower base excessively (tiler will grade it gradually to trough), making for cleaner tiling lines and easier to prep for waterproofing.

I didn't think of the trough drain at the time, but that totally seems like the way to go. I just centered the drained in the middle of the shower. I'm having my tiler come in to place and slope the concrete, he's done it a thousand times so I'm just gonna watch. I opted for mosaic tiles for the shower floor, but probably could have gone with larger/longer had I considered the trough.